Ebook
In this book, the author draws on two original sources, on a Greek biographer, historian, and rhetorician, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as well as on Pompeian domestic art and architecture. Generally, NT scholars read texts, but Greeks and ancient Romans loved beauty. The walls and floors of their houses were decorated with thousands of colorful frescoes and mosaics, art that two millennia later is still on display in Pompeii. Christians lived and worshipped in those typical houses; relating the art to NT texts generates many intriguing new questions! What stories/myths did Greeks and Romans see every day? What were their sports, and how violent were they?
Many NT scholars know as much or more Latin than they do Greek, and they therefore cite the Latin historian Livy rather than the Greek Dionysius, who wrote a century before the first Christian historian, Luke. Dionysius' rhetoric expressed values shared across cultures, by Greeks, Romans, and Jews (e.g., by the historian--and rhetorician--Josephus), some values that Luke also shares. Dionysius makes clear that cities and ethnic groups had to praise how they treated emigrant foreigners, questions handled differently by Josephus and by Luke. This enables new interpretations of Jesus' inaugural speech in Luke 4 and of Peter's second Pentecost speech in Acts 10.
“For nearly fifty years David Balch has been an internationally renowned interpreter of the social and cultural aspects of the New Testament and early Christian literature. In this remarkable collection of essays, Balch’s wide-ranging interpretive skills are on full display as he explores issues of class, ethnicity, gender, and orientation with an eye toward both the ancient context in which these texts were written and the (post-)modern context in which they are now read. To have these (mostly) previously published essays in one place is a treasure. This is vintage Balch at its best—a must-read!”
—Mikeal C. Parsons, professor of New Testament, Baylor University
“From the very beginning of his academic career, David Balch has been at the forefront of a fearless vanguard of biblical scholars who are relentless in probing ancient texts, works of art, and artifacts in light of pressing contemporary concerns. In these eleven essays, which are brimming with penetrating insights and observations, we see Balch at his intrepid best, addressing and illuminating a variety of complex issues, including social class, ethnicity, gender, violence, and sexual orientation. Highly recommended!”
—John T. Fitzgerald, professor of New Testament and early Christianity, University of Notre Dame
“Publication of selected essays from the productive career of David Balch is an event to celebrate. The eleven papers republished here exhibit the versatility and range of this scholar who has moved about comfortably not only in New Testament studies, the center of his contributions, but in Roman history, classical historiography, Greek philosophy, and the visual arts. The ample variety of topics in the collection offer thoughtful reflections for scholars of ancient history, religion, art, mythology, and cultural studies generally.”
—Erich S. Gruen, professor emeritus of history and classics, University of California, Berkeley
“David Balch’s new collection of essays is an impressive achievement, documenting the career of one of the most generative scholars of early Christianity in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Eleven chapters, originally published between 1991 and 2022, illuminate passages in Luke-Acts, the Pauline Epistles, and the so-called First Epistle of Clement. Balch draws upon his encyclopedic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world, assembling evidence from diverse sources—political histories, philosophical treatises, wall paintings, honorific inscriptions, public monuments, etc.”
—L. L. Welborn, professor of New Testament and early Christian literature, Fordham University
“Readers will appreciate David Balch’s attention to the cultural and material context of early Christianity and his conviction that their surroundings not only influenced writers of early Christian texts but that they also can illuminate our understanding of those texts.”
—Robin M. Jensen, professor of theology, University of Notre Dame
“This collection of essays by David Balch offers thought-provoking approaches to key issues in the history of religion. Organized around the themes of liminality, acculturation, and intersectionality, Balch’s essays take on topics as seemingly disparate as Epicureanism, the meaning of violent spectacles, foundation myths, Christian martyrs under Nero, gender and ethnicity, and homosexuality and Romans 1:24–27. Balch’s scholarship is rock-solid, yet filled with original interpretations that take the reader into uncharted territory. This collection is a showcase for Balch’s interdisciplinary methodologies, particularly timely because they offer a roadmap for scholars investigating the cultural formation of Christianity under Rome.”
—John R. Clarke, professor of art history, University of Texas at Austin
“As a Latin American biblical scholar, I am impressed with David Balch’s excellent sociohistorical analysis and dialogue with non-biblical sciences and their theorists. Balch finds and analyzes interesting parallels between events or characters of the time of the Roman Empire. But he does not stay in the past; his biblical analyses become relevant because his hermeneutics are guided by his own life. It is his experience of liminality, acculturation, and intersectionality that leads him to enrich his approach to biblical or extra-biblical texts. Making a book of his essays is a great idea. I recommend it.”
—Elsa Tamez, professor emerita of biblical studies, Latin American Biblical University, Costa Rica
“This collection of eleven representative essays takes readers on the life journey of an important exegete and is an invitation to a wide spectrum of New Testament discipline and methodological approaches, ranging from questions on the social and political dimensions of early Christianity in conflict within and with the Roman Empire, religious and geographical dimensions of the Samaritan/Judean border, social injustice, and intersectionality. This is a remarkably well-written collection of stimulating essays that illustrates David L. Balch’s involvement in liminality, acculturation, and intersectionality.”
—Annette Weissenrieder, professor of New Testament, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
“David Balch’s collection of methodologically innovative, historically rigorous, and exegetically challenging essays is a triumph of New Testament scholarship. Balch’s mastery of the visual evidence, the material finds of archaeological sites, the literature of ancient authors, and modern sociological scholarship leads the reader across unfamiliar terrain with great sensitivity, skill, and insight. Readers are challenged to understand Romans, Luke-Acts, and the rest of the New Testament in exciting new ways, socially, theologically, and pastorally.”
—James R. Harrison, professor of biblical studies, Sydney College of Divinity
“The essays collected here, a sampling of David Balch’s illustrious career of interpreting early Christianity in light of domestic and monumental art, politics of empire, philosophy, social and economic theory, and Greek and Roman historiography, do not let us look away. By documenting the violence and oppression early Christians resisted and inflicted, suffered and promoted, Balch challenges readers to face up to modern day lynching, murderous abductions, genocide, and sexually motivated violence. Balch brings to his scholarly work a heart open to victims of unheeding power and a mind dedicated to the discovery of their cries and their courage.”
—David E. Fredrickson, professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary
David L. Balch studied in Tübingen with Ernst Käsemann (1968–70) and then at Yale University with Abraham Malherbe and Wayne Meeks. From 1983 to 2006 he taught at Brite Divinity School/TCU in a program focused on postcolonial studies. In 1990 he became fascinated with the domestic art and architecture of Pompeii. Later he taught at PLTS/GTU/CLU (2006–16) and then concluded his career as a staff chaplain in the ICU at the VA hospital in Portland, Oregon.